Tuesday, 15 April 2014

SMS Broadcast stats - a real campaign example

Earlier on in a post, I mentioned how to tell if people click on the link in your SMS.

To recap, SMS is text only, but if you want to send people a picture or a link to your website content, the cheap and easy way to do this is to include a link in your text message.

For example, Dear VIP Customers, our new range is here so pop in before Fri and show the girls this text for 10% off. Sneak peek here: www.nicefrock.com.au .2optout rply STOP.

The website will render as a link on most peoples' phones, so if they want to check out your wares, they have the option of pressing the link and viewing your pics on your (mobile friendly!) website.

We never really know how many people READ your SMS, but we can tell how many people took the time to click your link and go to your website...just set up an account with Bitly or Instapage (see earlier post: How to tell if people respond to your SMS message?)

One of our lovely clients, who has a very loyal VIP membership for their fashion boutique did this, and they were able to tell how many people clicked through to the website FROM the SMS message using Bitly.com.

We can assume that most people READ the SMS and would not have bothered clicking through to see the frocks. Our client also had many customers coming into the store flashing the text message to sales staff, who were able to report back on the success of the SMS campaign.

Upshot: our client was very happy as the sale went extremely well during a normally quiet period, and they cleared a lot of stock...their customers loved the fact they got a VIP Text Alert and got in early to the sale. The girls at the checkout monitored how many people showed the text message or mentioned it.

This client usually does a big sale every quarter, and finds SMS is far more effective than email in getting the message out to her customers as they ALL HAVE THEIR PHONES ON THEM. Interesting observation is, our client's customers tend be be professional women aged 40+ , who are very active mobile users who are out and about, with no time to read email until 'later'. But she also sends out a lovely email newsletter too.

Quote from my client: "when they get the SMS some of them drive straight to the shop!"

NB: Bitly is a URL shortener that allows you to crunch a long domain name into a short link. For example we shortened www.smsexpressaus.blogspot.com.au down to bitly.com/smsxblog

As an SMS has 160 characters, this saves a lot of space and some money as you don't have to send 2 messages.

Bitly will also give you stats on how many people clicked the link...we LOVE it....and it's free!